1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to device tracking, and more particularly to methods and associated systems for ensuring location adherence for a tracked device as well as ensuring route adherence by employing geofencing techniques.
2. Background
The efficient tracking of objects (including people, vehicles, fleets of cargo, etc.) has been a long term goal of many different areas of society. With the increased processing capabilities of today's computer processors as well as the continued advancement within the communications industry, one would assume that device tracking would have become quite pedestrian in nature. To the contrary, accompanying the swift advancement of the above-described technologies is the reality that some basic goals of object tracking have yet to be achieved.
For example, one area within device tracking that continues to need refinement is the manner in which information relating to tracked devices is optimally obtained and managed. More specifically, fleet management businesses are currently hindered by the amount of network resources and associated hardware that are required to support a fleet of tracked devices that have constant data requirements. Also, these fleets of tracked devices are also required to provide information back to a data center on a nearly continuous basis. Normally, systems employ a network data center that continuously receives data from tracked devices and employs various location determination schemes to track an object's location. While this may not seem like much of a burden, if the number of tracked devices is large (e.g., one hundred or more), each tracked device providing continuous updates would require a very large network. The associated costs to build and maintain such a network would become prohibitive.
Additionally, the algorithms that support device tracking have not developed to the point at which they can be used efficiently. For example, while geofencing has been utilized within the device location industry in an effort to efficiently depict areas in which tracked objects are to be confined, the development of this technology has been slow, and the systems have been comparatively primitive with regard to the various abilities of the individual applications.
Furthermore, networks supporting this type of operation are further burdened by inherent variations in location detection (e.g., Global Positioning Systems (GPS), triangulation systems, etc.). These inherent variations, caused by anything from rounding errors in the calculation of position to changes in whether, cause slight variations in the determined position of a tracked device. For example, if a stationary object's position is determined by a GPS system three separate times, there would likely be three slightly different results. If used within a position or route adherence system, these inherent variations can cause numerous problems.